Sometimes car dealerships can’t help but be sacks of shit. Over the summer, a Florida man bought two used Volvos from a used car dealership, it wasn’t until after the deal went through that he found out both cars had been in accidents. Closer inspection from independent mechanics shows that both cars had non-functioning airbags and seat belts. When the customer found out, he immediately took them back. That’s all bad enough as it is, but as it turns out this story gets worse.
The dealer sold one of the Volvos again, and the I-Team at ABC Action News in Tampa Bay tracked down the owner to find out if the proper repairs had been done on the car. Wouldn’t you know it, the fixes hadn’t been done on Gilbert Santiago’s new-to-him 2022 Volvo S60. An independent mechanic looked over the U.S. Navy veteran’s car and found that the seat belt pretensioner and airbags didn’t work. He was also never told the car was sold at auction in 2023 following an accident where multiple airbags were deployed.
Last year, Ron Egbert bought the Volvo from the dealer in question – HGreg. He took the car to a Volvo dealership in Sarasota after his airbag warning light came on. What they discovered was rather troubling, as ABC Action News explains:
A technician discovered the driver’s airbag was rusted and had markings from a junkyard. Wires had been tampered with, and the airbag was incorrect for the vehicle.
Egert took the car back to HGreg, and this is what happened next:
“I showed them the pictures. And I said you’re taking this car back. I go… this car is unsafe to drive. No one should be driving this car,” Egert said.
HGreg’s spokesperson said the company “only purchases vehicles through the most reputable auction companies” and “conducts a multi-point inspection,” which includes “a review of diagnostic indicators.”
She also wrote in a statement, “If, for whatever reason, HGreg believes the vehicle airbags would not operate as intended, it would not be retailed by HGreg.”
That’s a great sentiment, but here’s the thing: HGreg did indeed sell the car to Santiago just a few months later, and he immediately had serious problems with it. The airbag light came on almost immediately, and that’s when he took it to the Volvo tech. Here’s what ABC Action News says they found after some digging and what Santiago did next:
He said the technician at the dealership told him used salvage parts were installed in his car.
That technician’s photo shows the same junkyard markings as the picture taken by Egert’s mechanic at a different dealership several months earlier.
Santiago paid to replace multiple airbags and related components.
“Probably around the ballpark of six grand out of my pocket,” Santiago said.
[…]
Photos taken by Santiago’s technician show wires wrapped in electrical tape, like those taken by Egert’s technician, who wrote that the wires to the airbag “have been tampered with.”
We asked Santiago to meet us at Brazzeal Automotive because his mechanic in Tampa did not discover issues with the seatbelt pretensioner we learned about from Egert’s report from the mechanic at the Volvo dealership in Sarasota.
“Now it’s going through all the different modules in the car,” certified technician Chris Wallin told us as he hooked up a diagnostic tool.
“I don’t see any active codes,” Wallin said, which would normally indicate all safety systems were working.
Sounds good, right? Wrong!
But when Wallin popped open the interior door panel, he found the seatbelt pretensioner system wasn’t plugged into the wiring harness, which would allow it to deploy.
“This should be plugged into here,” Wallin said, pointing to wires wrapped in electrical tape. “This is the seatbelt pretensioner. And it looks like there’s something wired in there. It’s all taped up.”
Wallin peeled back electrical tape to find a resistor.
A resistor is a passive component in an electrical circuit. It can be used to regulate or limit the flow of current.
[…]
“What they’ve done is just take a resistor that matches the resistance that the pretensioner is supposed to have and just kind of shoved it in that wiring harness to trick it into thinking it’s got a good pretensioner,” Wallin said of Santiago’s car.
The tech said it was done intentionally, but there’s no way of knowing who installed the resistor. He said it was installed to keep the seat belt restraint system from popping up a warning light. That is some truly evil shit, folks.
He says he contracted HGreg and they gave him the runaround, saying “it passed their inspection,” and because of that “nothing was showing that was wrong with it. So there’s nothing they can do.” Awful.
Here’s what HGreg had to say for itself, which isn’t much:
We contacted HGreg on Sept. 19 with a list of questions, but they didn’t answer them.
A spokesperson replied in an email, “Thank you for bringing the case of Mr. Santiago’s purchase to our attention. We will connect with the customer directly.”
More than a month after receiving that response, Santiago said he hadn’t heard from anyone from the company.
“They need to be held accountable for that because we are talking about people’s lives when they’re out there on the road,” Santiago said.
They really do. You know, I’ve heard tons of stories about dealers doing shady shit, but it usually has to do with financial deals. It’s very rare you get a dealer that goes out of its way to sell people unsafe cars twice.